Bloggers’ Take on Rove’s Resignation

As White House watchers scrutinize Karl Rove’s decision to resign and anticipate the next steps for the Bush administration, we take a look at some of this morning’s reaction from around the Web.

At DailyKos, one commenter wrote that Rove’s decision to step down wasn’t good enough: Investigate, prosecute and imprison the bum, while Matthew Yglesias at the Atlantic speculates that the Texan was leaving as a result of an unflattering story in this month’s issue.

On RealClearPolitics, former head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives Peter Wehner has posted a piece in appreciation of Rove, which includes a story about why he knew that Bush would be reelected: To give you a sense of the trust we all have in Karl: during the 2004 campaign, I was asked by lots of people who I thought would win and why. Rather than elaborate analysis, or a state-by-state breakdown, I had a simple formulation: We have George W. Bush and they John Kerry; we have Karl Rove, and they don’t.

Here is a broader sampling.

Jim VandeHeiand Mike Allenfrom The Politico:
And even [Rove's] political cunning proved to have his limits. Despite his efforts to keep Congress in Republican hands in the final days of the Bush presidency, the GOP lost its majorities in both houses of Congress in 2006 — even though the Democrats had to take six seats from them to wrest control of the Senate away.

The final election he oversaw for the GOP came as the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby loomed, and although Rove himself was never prosecuted over the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, his name will be indelibly linked with the scandal.

Kathryn Jean Lopezfrom National Review Online’s The Corner:
By leaving, Rove could be doing his last bit of service to the president: If it’s a successful last year, the myth of “Bush’s brain” may be laid to rest.

Ed Morrisseyfrom Captain’s Quarters:
[Rove's] departure will no doubt be the subject of celebration for the president’s most vociferous critics, but I think they’ll wind up missing him more than the president’s supporters. They won’t have Rove to kick around any more, and after the shock wears off, it will become apparent how silly all the Rove-kicking was from the beginning.

From Michelle Malkin:
What I see, alas, is the mark of self-delusion and blindness that has damaged the White House and the Beltway GOP. Rove pats President Bush (and himself) on the back for the disastrous Medicare entitlement expansion and the aborted Social Security reform effort. We get this admission: His biggest error, Mr. Rove says, was in not working soon enough to replace Republicans tainted by scandal.

The Left will harp on Plameout. But here’s what I find striking about Rove’s exit interview:

Not a word here about the Harriet Miers debacle, the botching of the Dubai ports battle, or the undeniable stumbles in post-Iraq invasion policies.

And not a word about the spectacular disaster of the illegal alien shamnesty, which will be the everlasting stain Rove leaves behind.

Clarissa Pinkola Estésfrom The Moderate Voice:
When key people resign ‘to spend more time with their families,’ this has become code, a euphemism to say: there’s trouble at Hamlet’s castle Capital T. Trouble. Something has gone very wrong….

…So, I think we can imagine the subtext is present in Rove’s assertion. It’ll be a matter of paying attention to the clues to see what Rove’s real strategy is the real carom shot.

I think we’d progress in peering underneath the swale, by asking, ‘What would I, at the height of my power, have to be thinking in order for me to say, I just think it’s time’ ?

It could be as simple as Rove leaving his job to spend more time with his attorneys.

Mike Nizzafrom The Lede (New York Times):
The mood in The White House after this news is still unknown, but a good hint may be in a 2005 Time magazine article written as Mr. Rove was (incorrectly) expected to be indicted in the C.I.A. leak investigation. The White House began to come to terms to life without him, and Mr. Rove was preparing reasons to leave, according to acquaintances:

He’s weary. His wife and only child, who is approaching college, miss him. He has monstrous legal bills. His unique bond with the President is under stress. His most important work is done.

At the time, his most important work was most certainly not done. The 2006 elections were ahead and his dreams of engineering a ‘decades-long G.O.P. majority in America’ was at stake.

So if Rove does head out, he may leave behind a wounded President who faces the prospect of having to abandon some of the pair’s Texas-size dreams, Time said.

With the Democrats in control of Congress, Mr. Bush’s term running out and Mr. Rove leaving, the Texas-sized dreams seem left twisting in the wind.

Mark Silvafrom The Swamp (Chicago Tribune):
Rove has not only steered Bush to remarkable political successes, but also weathered some of the roughest controversies of the administration from his role in discussions with reporters who wrote about the identity of a CIA agent he was never charged with any crime – to his unknown involvement in the firing of federal prosecutors with the Senate Judiciary Committee now weighing what to do about a subpoena for Rove’s testimony in its investigation that the White House has refused to honor.

Rove has steered his party’s highly developed micro-targeting” campaign of communications with likely voters and swing voters for not only the president’s elections, but also for congressional candidates and he would argue that the party’s loss of Congress in the midterm elections of 2006 was only a marginal loss, counted in small margins of defeat in several districts around the country a reversible loss, in the mind of Rove.

Joel Achenbachfrom the Washington Post’s Achenblog:
Karl Rove’s departure is an affirmation of the physics of presidential politics: What goes up must come down. Rove was the crucial aide in the launching of George Bush. Now Bush is in free fall. There’s nothing for Rove to do at this point but take a flying leap (to safety, and surely — just guessing here — to a nice slot on Fox News as a commentator, and maybe a regular column in the WSJ, and loads of lucrative speeches to corporate audiences and the annual conventions of such groups as the National Gibbet Association).

He says he’s done with politics. But political strategists never go away. They’ve got the fight in their blood. They dream of poll numbers. They know how the electorate is trending in every congressional district in the country. To give up politics would be like giving up eating, breathing, or lying.

Chris Lawrencefrom Outside the Beltway:
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes political figures resign to spend more time with their family because they really want to spend more time with their family. Whether or not that’s actually the case with Rove is anyone’s guess, however.

Comment fromDaily Kos:
Rove wasn’t ever planning to leave. His whole reason for being is defying Democrats and demoralizing them. That’s what gives him delight when he gets up in the morning. The only reason he would leave is if the papertrail finally lead to Rove and Dems finally have the evidence of something so nasty that Bush has to get him out. Staying and thumbing his nose at the Judiciary committees is no longer an option.

Whatever it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush issues him a pardon on his way out the door.

Oh, and maybe a medal of freedom.

Betsy Newmarkfrom Betsy’s Page:
Rove maintains that he will be out of politics for now. It might be that his very name is such political dynamite that no candidate would risk taking him on in this environment or he’d be termed just a Bush clone. That’s a shame since the man has undoubted political skills that would be valuable. However, even without the various scandals that have touched or been propagated by his enemies to try to touch him, recent years have cast doubt on his political finesse.

Steven Taylor fromPoliblog:
This is somewhat surprising, as one would have thought that Rove would’ve stuck it out until the very end. One wonders if he is seeking a break before working with a new candidate for the ’08 cycle. By the same token, it wouldn’t surprise me that [he] is tired of DC. The pressure from the Congress over the US Attorneys situation and so forth was likely an incentive as well.

From The Strata-Sphere:
Rove is very insightful, and his gift (as with Bush) is thinking how and working to get things done. The majority of the people around DC and NY City do nothing but think of what things might go wrong, or thinking up mind-numbingly simplistic solutions which cannot address the complexity of the tough issues that have been with us for decades. Rove is someone who helps make things happen – and because of this simple trait he has been branded some kind of political genius. Well I guess given the normal mindset in DC the ability to persevere instead of handwring he must look totally awesome in comparison.

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